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Level

Lower Secondary

Category

Engineering Science

Group

12-15

Project Title

HCI Virtual Tour

Synopsis

There are two parts to our project. The first being to conduct a study on the impact of Light on the artefacts to help preserve them in the Hwa Chong Heritage Centre and the second being creating a website and showcasing a virtual tour of the Heritage Centre to reach out and educate a greater audience.

MICHAEL YANG QIANLONG 1O21. From this Independent Studies experience, being the leader of the group, I learnt that I had to take initiative in progressing the project. I could not just wait for someone to tell me what to do, what to research on, how to do up the slides. Neither could I rely on my team member to take initiative. I also learnt from this experience, how to manage my time better. For the prelims and semifinals, I had to struggle with making time for my studies as well as for the project. However, I was overconfident in the sense that I thought we had plenty of time to finish up our project, even when the judging was less than a week away. From this Independent Studies, I also learnt about light through my research. I found out about light intensities, wavelengths and spectrums, just to name a few. Through this experience, I also learnt how to correctly refer to other people's work using the APA format. It taught me that plagiarism was wrong and honesty was key in whatever I was doing. One problem that I faced was that my only other team member was uncooperative before the preliminary round judging. He said that he had to "study for his tests", and hence could not help me with the slides and the research, which got me very frustrated. I understood that he had to study and had lots of homework, but he was in the same class as me, and was given the same workload as me. I felt that I was giving up my time studying to do something that my team member had helped very little in, and yet I had to include him in my group, claiming that he had done his part in the prelims round. 2. In order to solve this problem, I went to consult him about his actions. I clearly, specifically instructed him on what to do for the next round of judging and made sure that he could squeeze out some time to do his part. I also made it a point to start doing the work first, so as to set an example for him to follow. By making the instructions clear, I was assured that my team member would not go home and be confused about what to do, and end up not doing anything. And, by setting an example, I could encourage my team member to do his work. However, as I was angry at him during the consultation, I scolded him, thinking that he would reflect on his actions and improve. 3. Through clearly presenting what I wanted my team member to do, I was able to get satisfactory work from my team member - it was exactly as I told him to do so. For the 2nd round of the semi finals judging, he was able to improve his presentation - from stuttering here and there to being able to speak fluently. Although the quality of work of my team member improved, scolding him proved ineffective, as I made him upset and he was more reluctant to doing what I told him to do. I can use these strategies in normal school life. For example, if I were to be tasked to form a group and be the leader of the group, I would equally divide the workload between everyone to ensure equality and also convey clearly what I want them to do. An alternative strategy that I could have resorted to was to not scold my team member, rather speak to him in a more soft, caring tone. This can help as not only does it improve the our friendly relationship, it can also serve as a encouragement towards him - he would feel more inclined to produce a better quality of work as he would feel that he had contributed in a big part of the project's success and hence want to do even more for the project.

Group Members :

LOO WENG YEE, CALEB 1O2Projects Day > Reflections Through the secondary 1 independent studies, I have learnt a lot of life skills and am very grateful that there was such a component. First of all, we identified 2 problems – One, with the lighting in the Hwa Chong Heritage Centre. The problem with that was that if we used dim lighting, this might result in the visitor’s difficulty in reading the inscriptions or viewing the displays, but yet, if the lighting was too bright, this might cause artefact damage, thus, we decided that the type of lighting used and the intensity of the light bulbs had to be one of the right intensity. The second problem was that even if the lighting in the HCI Heritage Centre was perfect, but if no one comes and visits it, it would be a waste. The HCI Heritage Centre is under-utilized. It is visited only by secondary one students and selected visitors, and this results in the unknown history of the Chinese high school, which is also a significant part of Singapore’s history, and so, a solution would be a virtual tour. Thus, the aim of our project has 2 parts. For the science part, is to conduct a study on the impact of light on the artefacts to help preserve them in the Hwa Chong Heritage Centre, and for the technology part, is to create a website and showcase a virtual tour of the Heritage Centre to reach out and educate a greater audience. These two components of our project complement each other. For the light part, we first had to research and read up on lighting. For example, we found out more about the different types of light bulbs and their differing intensities and e.g. Fluorescent, Luminescent, Incandescent, Tungsten, Halogen and LED etc. We also read up more about wavelengths of different types of light, like Infrared, visible light, and ultraviolet light. During the June Holidays, we also visited NUS Museum, with a conservator to guide us and explain the purposes of the lightings in the museum. After that, we also took a visit to the Trika Showroom, where we learnt more specifically about the properties of different light bulbs. When school reopened, we learnt how to use the spectrometer and how to read and interpret the readings on it. Then, we brought it down to the Heritage Centre to measure the light intensities of different areas of the Heritage Centre. We took the measuring at the trophy area, and the results were that the light intensity there was up to 2000 courts, which was a high intensity which may cause damage. Its wavelength was approximately 400-600nm. The trophies were still fine because the intensity there was only 100 courts. For the virtual tour part, we had never created a virtual tour before, and so we weren’t very sure on how to proceed. To solve this problem, we searched online for professional virtual tours for our reference, and in the end, we decide to incorporate some unique and cool features into our own virtual tour. However, we should not have used our own judgement to gauge the standard of the virtual tour and we should have conducted a survey on what types of features are more appealing to the target audience and which ones they like more and prefer, so, that is definitely one learning point in Engineering, never to use your own judgement, but to also, gain feedback from your target audience, that you may make something that appeals to them. So, to start making the virtual tour, we had to make a trip down to the Heritage Centre to take pictures to compile into the scenes of the virtual tour. We also had to take close-up images of each sign board for the pop-up images to appear when clicked on that particular sign board. Then, we also had to make a map of the Heritage Centre for the virtual tour. That wasn’t very easy because, at that time, we weren’t very familiar with the layout and the floorplan of the Heritage Centre, so, we had to use a lot of visualisation to try to remember the placement of each section of the Heritage Centre. However, we overcame this problem by going to the Heritage Centre again to check whether our memory of the layout of the Heritage Centre was accurate or not. So, in the end, after hard work and trial and error, the virtual tour was finally made and published, with scenes made up of images, and close-up images as the pop-up images when clicked on that hotspot, and with the map at the top-right hand corner to be the main guide around the Heritage Centre. The virtual tour can be moved automatically or manually, and you can scroll to zoom in and zoom out at your own liking. All in all, the project- HCI Virtual Tour has been a very fruitful and enriching experience for me. I feel that has been a meaningful and fulfilling project that is worth it.